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Bellum omnium contra omnes

Debunking Propaganda, Part III, A Tea Party Fabrication

When last we hit the debunking process, we spoke of taxation. An onerous subject, to be sure, but not nearly as ticklish as the one I am going to tackle tonight. The misinformation, both in style and substance of that great force in American politics today, the tea party.

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“So what do we do if we get bitten by something deadly, then?”
He blinked at me as if I was stupid.
“Well what do you think you do?” he said. “You die of course. That’s what deadly means.”

Douglas Adams, Last chance to see

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Yes I understand that I wrote yesterday about the similarities between the tea party and their supposed enemies, the Democrats, but that was to point out the fact that not only has the Democratic party moved to the right in recent years, but that the right has in fact co-opted some progressive populist messaging. But that isn’t what tonight is about here. We are going to take apart one story written by tea party sympathizers, to find out what misinformation they are putting out, both through sins of commission and omission, and other more subtle subterfuges.

I read a story on tea party dot org, titled “Soldiers overseas? No voting for you!” which is from that great bastion of non-journalism, world net daily. The story, as told by wnd, makes it seem as if the rights of our citizen soldiers are being undermined by the processes at work in our government, and that in 2008 enough votes to turn the election of Al Franken were turned aside, purposefully. A former lawyer of the DOJ, writing an op-ed piece in the Washington Times, cited in this “report” claims up to 500 voters have been disenfranchised by the government, and the Government may still be capable of doing the same thing.

The story about voting rights abuse going against the military is about what? Laws involving military voting, obviously. The story spoke of the DOJ letting slide laws that are already in place to insure proper voting protections for our military personnel.

The allegation is untrue.

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Viddy of the day, from July last year, Sen. John Cornyn talking about what was to become the MOVE act.

The art of concluding from experience and observation consists in evaluating probabilities, in estimating if they are high or numerous enough to constitute proof. This type of calculation is more complicated and more difficult than one might think. It demands a great sagacity generally above the power of common people. The success of charlatans, sorcerors, and alchemists — and all those who abuse public credulity — is founded on errors in this type of calculation.

Benjamin Franklin & Antoine Lavoisier

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But before the breakdown, lets look at the takeaway here. The claim is that an election was stolen, so they claim, by people stealing votes from our military, and they are going to do it again. That is what they want you to think. Let’s take a good look at what the actual case really is.

Let’s take a look at the same story from a different perspective, shall we? Let’s go to 2 real and true bastions of liberal politics, absolute hotbeds of left wing subversive writing.

Stars and Stripes, and the Overseas vote foundation.

Perspective, they have it. The truth is that a law was passed in October 2009 meant to streamline the voting process for overseas voters. It is called the MOVE act. What does the move act entail? 4 basic tenets.

1) Eliminating the need for notariziation for overseas voters, 8 states require notarization for completed ballots.

2) All states must make voter registration and absentee balloting available electronically

3) all overseas voters must re-register every election cycle

4) all states must plan for a 45 day turnaround for their ballots. 25 states did not have that in 2008.

On top of this, the national conference of commissionners on uniform state laws issued guidelines for the implementation of said guidelines as soon as possible. And one of the provisos of this law is the following:

The above provisions apply with respect to the November 2010 General Election.

YOUR GOVERNMENT IS NOT TRYING TO TAKE AWAY OUR MILITARY’S VOTING RIGHTS. And anyone who tells you otherwise is a lying piece of shit with an agenda so against the truth as to make an honest American’s head spin.

Oh, and the DOJ thing? That was just in the story so they could put in the words “NEW BLACK PANTHER PARTY” in the story, which, inexplicably, placed that little gem in the first paragraph. Why? Because you, White America, should quake in fear over three black men dressed like angry punk smurfs threatening people who weren’t actually there, and who the Bush DOJ let go because it was silly bullshit. The DOJ does not enter into the military voting issue at all. That is at best an FEC and Pentagon matter.

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And that whole minnesota thing? Pure bullshit. The tea partiers omitted the truth here, and forgot to tell you that the State of Minnesota is in the forefront of military and absentee voting for our men and women in the field, as seen by the vast decrease in rejected ballots in 2008 over 2006, and the much larger amount of ballots cast in 2008 over 2006. Check the “minnesota takes the lead” link above to read the entire article.

In 2006 only 1,276 votes were counted from Minnesota’s fighting men and women, of which almost 206, nearly 15% were rejected. In 2008 a total of 100 more votes were rejected. Sounds bad, right? Ya, until you count the fact that 3 times the earlier number of Minnesota’s fighting men and women voted. 3,702 votes were cast and 306, or only 6.4% were rejected.

Their “500 votes not counted”?

Pure fabrication.

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So let’s take a look at this. The doj, who otherwise doesn’t figure in the reality at all, are brought into the picture for racial reasons. Then the tea party patsies go about destroying the truth, and fabricating lie after lie for the sole purpose of attempting to create, in the minds of the right wing echo chamber, the vision of government as pure evil, when they themselves come much closer to its actual embodiment, by skewing reality to suit their own ends.

Why do it? Simple. If all they went on was reality, they would find that life in America isn’t all that bad, and that the government is actually doing some very important things, good things, like helping the votes of all members of the military count, which was a more difficult thing to do before the Obama administration came to power.

That does not fit their paradigm, so they try to create their own reality, where truth and fiction meet in a place called “TEA PARTY”

Debasing the very men they admire. They do not do the fine Americans who held the Boston Tea Party any justice. Those men had real issues to redress, they didn’t have to make any up to gin up any anger, they didn’t have to make things up. They were honest upright citizens, standing up for their rights, unlike these alleged tea party patriots.